Anxiety can wreck your job interview performance

If you find yourself getting anxious in the lead up to a job interview or important meeting and you do not perform well due to that high level of anxiety, Emotional Freedom Technique (Tapping) is a real solution that works.

EFT (Tapping) is a systematic process where you tap on the end points of meridians of your body. When you tap on these end points of meridians you send a signal to the amygdala, the part of the limbic system of the brain that is involved with emotions and other reactions to stimuli.

The amygdala is a processing centre that is hooked up to receive incoming messages from our senses and our internal organs. It is highly involved with different emotional responses. A lot of people know the amygdala as the common fight or flight (or freeze) response centre.

When your Amygdala is firing

When you are stressed out because you’ve received an email and you are not happy with what it says, or you have a challenge in a relationship, or you are anxious about a meeting coming up like a job interview, your amygdala is firing. That is what the feeling of stress is and we all know about the feeling of stress.

What EFT (Tapping) does is calm that Amygdala especially when we do it while acknowledging the negative feeling. You could say something like ‘I’m anxious right now, or I’m scared, or I’m overwhelmed’ while tapping the EFT sequence. This sends a calming signal to the amygdala, the body, the brain, and everything relaxes.

The basic process of EFT is to bring up what is bothering you, go through the systematic tapping sequence while acknowledging the issue and find relief. While initially it is beneficial to do this process with a trained EFT practitioner, you can’t do any harm to yourself if you try it on your own.

Where do these signals stem from?

To help my explanation, let’s look at a simple example of someone who has a fear of public speaking. There is something running in that person’s brain that says that situation is dangerous, that speaking in front of people is scary.

What happened to this adult was that when they were 10 years old, they got up to read in front of a class, stumbled on a word and everybody laughed at them. In that moment that little 10 year olds brain says, this is dangerous.

The stress in our lives, the fears and the worries are created from a series of events that taught us a particular situation is dangerous or scary. So when the brain says everyone laughed at me because I stumbled on a word, it says, I’m never doing that again.

Just about everything in our lives where we are getting stuck, whether it be in relationships or getting healthy, losing weight, improving finances; everything we want in our life, if we are not there yet, it is because we have these experiences and brain that has been conditioned step by step to keep it stuck.

Aged 60 and anxious about job assessment tests

I recently worked with a client who was in a state of anxiety about completing job assessment tests that were timed and included numerical and verbal reasoning, along with what the Employer said was an intelligence test. She was freaking out! To make it even harder, at age 60, she was fearful of how she would perform against much younger applicants.

In a one hour tapping session, we uncovered that her anxiety stemmed from low self-esteem that had developed when she was a young child due to a number of key experiences relating to her Mum. As we uncovered these memories and brought them to the surface of her awareness, we were able to tap on the emotions connected to the experience and dissipate the charge with profound success. The result was that she went into the testing process feeling very relaxed and thinking it will be what it will be, I know I’ll do my best.

A few days later, I received an email to say she had aced the tests and had another interview with the Employer to go to the next stage of the process.

Missing out on jobs because of my interview anxiety

This highly talented and experienced professional who often interviewed people in his own work, suffered intense and crippling interview anxiety. So much so that he was missing out on job opportunities because of his awkward and nervous interview performance.

It would start when he was sitting in reception waiting for the interviewer and the more time that passed, the worse it got. He would start criticising himself and focus on doubts and fears, so by the time he sat down in the interview room, he felt worthless and struggled to answer basic questions. No matter how much he prepared for an interview, his fears and anxiety would take over.

Once we started tapping, he quickly identified stressors that had originated from his most recent job where he’d been excessively micro managed, which triggered feelings of worthlessness and knocked his confidence. Further tapping and going a little deeper, he also linked the feeling of worthlessness to a work burn out situation from 10 years ago.

Quickly responding to tapping and feeling completely relaxed, EFT took the charge out of these emotions so rapidly, he was looking forward to his next interview opportunity.

D.I.Y

If you find yourself bumping into the same kinds of challenges again and again, chances are you are carrying stress from events that happened to you in the past. Events that trigger a fight or flight response that feel out of your control. Imagine how much better you would feel if the stress from these events was no longer part of your life experience.

One remarkable fact about EFT (Tapping) is that you don’t need a qualified practitioner to try it. While you will develop more profound and long lasting results if you do engage a trained professional, a You Tube search will show up videos you can try.

If you do want to chat further about using EFT (Tapping), check out the ‘Complimentary Career Consult’ option at www.career-reboot.com or go straight in and book a one hour session or Career Reboot program, where you will be guided to tap into your true potential.